This paper emphasizes the properties of a family of inequality measures which extends the Atkinson indices and is axiomatically characterized by a multiplicative decomposition property where the withingroup component is a generalized weighted mean with weights summing exactly to 1. This family...

Measuring the extent to which distribution is polarized has recently attracted some attention from economists. Polarization, though related to inequality, is a different concept and implies a tendency towards clustering of observations into groups. It is of interest because it may be related to...

This paper identifies a multiplicative decomposition for the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke poverty indices as a product of the three components which should be involved in every poverty index: the incidence of poverty, measured by the headcount ratio, the intensity of poverty, measured by the aggregate...

We axiomatically characterize the Theil ordering of income inequality. In addition to the uncontroversial axioms of anonymity, homogeneity, replication invariance, strong directedness, and a standard continuity property, we appeal to both an independence and a decomposability axioms. These two...

We identify an ordinal decomposability property and use it, along with other ordinal axioms, to characterize the Theil inequality ordering.

This paper emphasizes the properties of a family of inequality measures which extends the Atkinson indices and is axiomatically characterized by a multiplicative decomposition property where the withingroup component is a generalized weighted mean with weights summing exactly to 1. This family...

In the literature there are a number of generalizations of the Gini coefficient which inherit most of its appealing properties. These families allow the incorporation of different value judgments and all of them are more sensitive to transfers among the poorest individuals in society than to...